In this age of the COVID-19 pandemic, all our systems of daily life are being violently uprooted, leaving many with an existential dread about where the future might lie. We would like to help dispel this malaise through the sharing of knowledge and techniques to help everyone gain a greater sense of control over their own fate, as well as the broader fate of the world-at-large. Such major challenges to our health and well-being offer unique opportunities to truly grow into the more mature and capable souls we came to this world to be.

Specifically, Karen Newell and I will host a series of completely free live webinars, United in Hope and Healing, beginning on March 26th (or March 27th depending on your time zone) and all 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month thereafter through the duration of this crisis. These webinars will build a community united in collaboration and mutual support. Social distancing may trigger loneliness, when in truth, we’re all in this together and we are blessed to engage technology to gather.

At a pivotal time of disruption in daily life around the world, a revolution in healing therapies for emotional health challenges has emerged. The Spirituality & Mental Health practitioner training course is designed to enable health and wellness practitioners, and those invested in the science of healing, to integrate familiar conventional therapies with new methods. Accessing a deeper, transformational consciousness can result in a dramatic reduction in anxiety, stress, depression, addiction, insomnia, suicidal ideation and other mental health problems while elevating creativity, focus, mood stabilization, sound sleep, general emotional and mental wellness and overall fulfillment.

It is crucial to recognize that one of the grandest lessons of the emerging neuroscience of consciousness is that consciousness, or mind, is a primordial force in the universe, not something generated by the physical matter of the brain. From a practical viewpoint, this acknowledgement of the reality of “mind-over-matter” in the universe has been broadly supported by medical science for over seven decades through the placebo effect, the gold standard for comparison in the assessment of any new proposed medicine or treatment. The common use of the placebo-controlled trial is an admission by medical scientists that a patient’s beliefs are crucial in achieving any true health or healing. The more one reviews a deep analysis of the placebo effect, the more one wonders if there is any major component of healing that does NOT involve the free will and conscious mind of the subject.

To that end, for the duration of this crisis period, Sacred Acoustics is offering their Whole Mind Bundle (in MP3 format) at a discounted price of $19 (a $66 value) or, for those with economic uncertainty, at no cost whatsoever, no questions asked. This set of recordings and listening protocols reduced anxiety by 26% in a Manhattan psychiatric practice after two weeks of listening, as published in a pilot study in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in February 2020. These recordings can also assist with sleep, relaxation and focus.

For those who wish to go deeper in their personal practice, Inner Sanctum Center offers a membership platform with further opportunities for guidance and interconnection.

As we move forward, perfect your mode of social distancing, wash and disinfect hands frequently, and remember to support those around you, especially those less fortunate, in any way possible. We are all in this together, and the most powerful way to energize your soul journey is to serve as a conduit for the loving, healing energy at the very core of our awareness. We can gain the information and energy in meditation and centering prayer, but, ultimately, we progress along our projected pathway through action – reaching out to take care of the least, the last, and the lost. The challenge of COVID-19 will ultimately make us much stronger – together!

May is Mental Health Month, and a timely topic it is. For the first time in a century, our life expectancy in the US is now declining over the last three years, as opposed to continuing what many saw as an inexorable rise. The culprit is not the usual suspects of heart disease, cancer, and stroke, but instead this alarming dip in longevity is due to the opioid crisis (which killed 72,000 Americans in 2017) and a sharp rise in suicides across broad categories of age and gender (increasing overall 26% in the US between 1999 and 2015).

This tsunami of misery is related to the relative spiritual vacuum in our culture – a secular society that maintains only the material world exists and any other phenomena are illusions to be ignored. Our predominantly physical approach to mental health (in the form of pharmaceuticals) has failed to reverse this alarming trend, but striking alternatives exist. I will be co-presenting a course in Fall 2019 to health practitioners on one such modality. The solutions lie in developing a facile relationship with our more capable “higher souls” through a practice of going within. Only then can we address the emptiness inside that leads people towards depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide. Quieting the mind is challenging for most in our modern world, especially for those struggling with mental health issues.

As many of my fellow physicians are discovering, any true physical, mental and emotional health depends fundamentally on spiritual health. Spiritual, in this sense, is not necessarily religious, but simply an admission of the connectedness we all share (with other sentient life as well as with the universe at large), as well as a sense of meaning and purpose of our existence. Personally, I have maintained an ongoing sense of connection since my coma journey from listening to Sacred Acoustics audio recordings on a regular basis. Such a process helps me to connect with the neutral observer within in order to gain a broader perspective over life’s challenges and to find inner peace.

The sense of hearing represents one of our most primordial connections with the world around us. Various manipulations of sound have been used for tens of thousands of years to help engender transcendental states of conscious awareness, in the form of chants, anthems and hymns. The very resonant acoustical properties of ancient burial chambers, as well as of soaring cathedrals, all indicate how experiences and memories of sound, or especially of “music,” play an integral role in our connecting with the various phases of human existence, especially those beyond the material world.

Most of these sound modalities involve neural processing in the recently-evolved acoustic neocortex of the temporal lobes. I believe that one of the primary reasons that the binaural beat brainwave entrainment of Sacred Acoustics is so powerful in allowing transcendental levels of consciousness is that its presumptive effect in a far more primitive region of the brain, the superior olivary nucleus (SON) complex in the lower brainstem, greatly amplifies its impact on levels of consciousness.

In evolutionary biology, one can examine the origins of a function such as consciousness by assessing the role of more primitive anatomicstructures descending through the tree of evolution. Thus most sounds humans process mainly in the recently evolved neocortex (evolved ~ few millions of years ago) are not as intimately involved with the origins of consciousness-allowing structures in the lower brainstem (the SON and related reticular activating system evolved over 300 million years ago, before mammals, at a time when reptiles and amphibians were just crawling out of the muck).

To date, most of our observations about the utility of Sacred Acoustics tones have been anecdotal, but recent clinical pilot studies are leading towards a more objective scientific assessment of the relevant tools and techniques. The pilot study for this work, in which 26% of study patients had a significant reduction in anxiety as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, vs only 7% of controls, certainly suggests a major role for Sacred Acoustics tones in treating anxiety. The study has been accepted by the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, for publication soon. (Anna Yusim, MD, Justinas Grigaitis. Efficacy of binaural beat meditation technology for treating anxiety symptoms: a pilot study. J Nervous Mental Dis, 2019)

Based on this clinical study (and the myriad associated clinical observations), my life partner and co-founder of Sacred Acoustics, Karen Newell, and psychiatrist Anna Yusim, will join me in teaching a series of healing practitioner workshops this fall aimed at educating health care workers of all stripes (physicians, psychologists, nurses, social workers, addiction specialists, reiki workers, massage therapists, etc.) in the potential for applying such Sacred Acoustics tones towards healing in cases of anxiety, depression, insomnia, and lack of focus.

During this course, we will discuss various theories and non-conventional relationships of brain and consciousness and demonstrate the scientific evidence for filter theory and mind over matter as it relates to health. We will review the various causes of mental health disorders and gain a broader perspective on mental health treatment modalities. You will participate in direct practice using audio brainwave entrainment technology, breath techniques, heart awareness and additional practices. Ultimately, you will realize the importance of personal experience in meditation for daily life and how to apply the use of sound meditation in the process of becoming more whole.

Other pilot projects in the works include the use of Sacred Acoustics tones in a hospice and palliative care setting, especially assessing their use in alleviating agitation, engendering terminal lucidity and potentially even shared-crossing experiences (similar in quality to near-death experiences, shared crossings generally occur in health workers or family at the bedside of a dying patient).

As the focus for the treatment of such conditions falls away from pharmaceuticals and more towards powerful modalities like Sacred Acoustics tones, we are uncovering more of our innate abilities to heal ourselves through expanding power of “placebo effect,” a decades-long admission from the medical community that our beliefs do indeed provide much of our true ability to heal — we truly live in a universe where mind has tremendous power over matter, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the use of sound to heal our mental selves.

Valentine’s Day is the one holiday that is devoted to Love, plain and simple – to Cupid, and to romantic love expressed between human beings. Most of us have experienced this kind of love at least once in our lives, and hopefully much more than that. The most fortunate have actually found a partner who supports them throughout their life in the earthly realm. To be complete, such love is always reciprocal, and mutually beneficial.

Love is truly that which “makes the world go round.” The world would be a pretty miserable place without it. And yet even such admirable cases of mutual love are not always as pure as they might be – they involve “conditions.” Examples include cases of jealousy, or a possessive “love” that more resembles a form of barter, in which one chooses to love only if certain conditions are met. In fact, the real world of couples’ relationships all too often involves adapting self-serving conditions between the two. Such relationships fail to offer the reward of significant mutual benefit.

A “purer” form of love, less involved with conditions and such apparent barter, might be seen between parents and children. It’s easy to love newborn babies in all their fresh innocence, but babies grow up into teenagers, and so on. Ideally, parents love their children “no matter what,” and offer compassion, kindness, and all manner of support even in the face of lesser human failings.

I submit that the rarer, more extraordinary examples of mutually beneficial unconditional love are far more satisfying and fulfilling than the conditional love so often found in relationships. We cultivate far richer relationships as we become less egocentric and take a bigger view of who we are and why we are here. In addition, we come to see that no soul is an island – we grow tremendously and more fully satisfy our purpose as humans when we develop a loving relationship with another person that demands no conditions at all.

This Valentine’s Day, I suggest taking a bigger view of how our relationships in life help to serve a rich purpose in our soul growth, in getting right at the heart of why we even exist. Ideally, that bigger view includes no “conditions,” and thus also broadens the relationships that contribute to our learning and growth. Let that broader unconditional love first and foremost include yourself, because so many of the world’s problems result from the fact that we don’t even love ourselves enough – not in a selfish, childish fashion, but in a sense that acknowledges the divinely sourced beings we all are; not dependent upon the approval or affection of others, but centered in the unique value of your soul and its connections. Then allow that unconditional love to spread, to include truly loving all souls. Such unconditional love has infinite power to heal, whether the individual, or the whole world. And any relationship is an ideal place to start in assessing the power such love without conditions can truly have.

So, Happy Valentines Day! Use this special time to start delving into the benefits of unconditional love. “All the world loves a lover” has never been truer than in the case of one who loves without demanding some favor in return.

Ever since my coma due to severe gram-negative bacterial meningo-encephalitis in 2008, I have come to see that all physical, mental, and emotional healing benefits first and foremost from a basis in spiritual healing. By spiritual, I mean an awareness that we are purposefully and meaningfully connected with others, all of life, and the universe at large, including its divine creative source. We are here to learn and teach, and the challenges in life (including illness and injury) provide the stepping stones for growth in this “soul school.” Our growth depends on how we respond to those challenges, and progress results from recovering our sense of connection with the universe and the higher purpose of our existence. Ultimately, such powerful healing emerges from love of self, and others, ideally without any attached conditions.

I recently had the opportunity to support two wonderful new books on the human capacity to heal, and to write an article that addressed my thoughts on healing in modern medicine. All three of these efforts provided elucidation of the reality of profound healing through the application of our deeply spiritual nature. While some in medicine might debate the role our spirituality plays in the process of healing, I believe that awakening to such concepts (independently of any orthodox religious framework, if necessary) can enable quite remarkable enhancement in achieving overall health.

Dr. Anna Yusim asked me to write a foreword to her new book Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2017). Her wonderful book is filled with clinical examples from her busy New York City psychiatric practice. She makes a very powerful case for the value of spiritual awareness in the process of healing her patients, and leading them into far more productive and joyful lives through her psychospiritual approach.

I have also endorsed Dr. Nauman Naeem’s new book Healing from the Inside Out: Overcome Chronic Disease and Radically Change Your Life (Forres, Scotland, UK: Findhorn Press, 2017), releasing on September 12, 2017. As a critical care physician, his career has involved the care of many very ill medical patients. His book reveals a profound sense of insight into the details of his patients’ lives, and an analysis and understanding of very deep interconnections that allow for refreshing insights as to the potential for spiritual healing. His comprehension is so deep that natural consequences of his narration include the general benefits of finding our very purpose in life as well as how individual healing can make the world a far better place for others, too. His depth of insight is rarely encountered in a modern medical book, showing us how we can all influence our own return to wholeness, thus healing.

Finally, my article on the extraordinary and miraculous healings often found in the near-death experience literature concludes that profound spiritual insights and experiences are often associated with healing that far exceeds the expectations of modern western medicine. Again, such spiritual healing dominates in the emergence of any associated physical, mental and emotional healing. Although identification of the exact mechanisms involved is still incomplete, plenty of evidence exists to support the more robust study of these miraculous cases.

Living in a Mindful Universe relates the emerging view of consciousness that is revolutionizing the scientific community, and is, in many ways, the continuation of my journey since writing Proof of Heaven. This journey parallels an unprecedented shift in the western scientific paradigm that, when fully incorporated, will lead to far more meaning and purpose in our lives. Read more

Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist James Carpenter has written an interesting article in Aeon addressing the scourge of the misuse of antipsychotic drugs in developed countries. In so doing, he opens the conversation to points I often make to medical audiences about the fundamental role of spiritual healing, and of deeper understanding of spiritual disease, in healing of all types (physical, mental and emotional).

Dr. Carpenter points out, as have others before him, that the successes of psychotherapy over the last few decades have been buried under the current paradigm of defaulting to antipsychotic drugs without addressing the fundamental mental issues. Although these drugs can be very useful in the initial management of acute psychosis (when combined with appropriate psychotherapy), they cause great difficulties when used over longer periods of time without any corresponding psychotherapy.

At the heart of the matter is the conventional tendency to view the hallucinations of psychosis as a lifelong brain disorder that can only be managed through long-term antipsychotic medications that have significant and problematic side effects. Yet there is no evidence that the brain in acute psychosis is different from the normal brain (unlike the situation in chronic psychosis which often has some underlying brain abnormality). He points out that in fact the most dangerous aspect of their use is in trying to wean people off of them after months to years of dependence on such medications.

Given the classical psychotherapeutic approach that Dr. Carpenter and colleagues used decades ago, acute psychosis treated with good psychotherapy led to rapid and stable recovery (without the use of brain chemistry-altering antipsychotic drugs). This is contrary to the current script in managing acute psychosis that labels the brain as abnormal and the psychotic condition as lifelong and in need of ongoing chemical manipulation.

Dr. Cameron observes that the people most afflicted by such acute psychotic illness “have generally been badly hurt, usually early in life, often by people upon whom they were vitally dependent.” Their disorder is fundamentally one of their soul’s primary spiritual journey, manifested through their personal story. Long-term drug treatment may not be necessary, or as effective, if the core causes of a “spiritual emergency” are addressed through therapy. And, an accurate assessment to distinguish between this and the long-term disease states requires our more careful observation of these potential underlying causes.

Dr. Carpenter concludes that the powerful antipsychotic drugs change the brain and makes it profoundly more drug-dependent, which is what makes the use of drugs so dangerous over the longer term. But it is much easier to prescribe and adjust medications in trying to damp down the patient’s undesirable symptoms and behavior, than to actually delve into psychotherapy in an effort to address those early childhood traumas and the psychic repercussions from them that contribute to the symptoms of acute psychosis. Such effective psychotherapy is an endangered species, when one views the current dominant modes of training for psychotherapists, especially in the developed world, with its heavy-handed dependence on antipsychotic medications.

Adopting the broad interconnected view of modern concepts of transpersonal psychology, Dr. Carpenter reiterates Dr. Stan Grof’s belief that “the healing must involve a new integration of deep, inner parts of the person and deep, transpersonal forces beyond the person. It involves new connections between the secret self and others – between the conscious self and the self beyond consciousness nowadays referred to as ‘spiritual’.”

Dr. Carpenter’s views are in alignment with those of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE.org), a collection of certified mental health professionals and spiritual guidance counselors who train to address the psychiatric issues of those who have undergone profound spiritual awakenings.

I believe that this discussion is just the tip of the iceberg, and that, in fact, all of Western medicine will morph into a more powerful and effective system for well-being (not just “healing”) when we come to acknowledge and develop the skills to address the spiritual aspects of all disease and take that much larger view of the patient as a spiritual being in an existence that is fundamentally spiritual. Some traditional healing practices could be integrated or affirmed, including the power of prayer and of energy, healing touch, etc. From my point of view, our greatest work as healers will emerge from this far more comprehensive worldview embracing our spiritual essence.

Those who hunger for more in realizing this far grander view of our spiritual existence and how it opens profound channels of healing can join Karen Newell (co-founder of Sacred Acoustics) and me at one of our upcoming workshops listed on our Events page.

We will cover territory such as harboring a much grander view of ourselves, of our universe, and of our possibilities for healing, that touches on the eternal and the infinite. This personal knowing is available to us all through direct experience by slipping beyond the veil that normally obscures the full view of our existence.

I’ve done a lot of interviews since PROOF OF HEAVEN launched, and have been blessed to speak with everyone from local radio hosts to New York Times reporters, from Japanese documentarians to Oprah. After a while I noticed the same questions coming up again and again. Some were about my specific story; others were about what I had learned and how it could apply to others’ journeys. These questions were shared across all ages, countries, genders, and life experiences. No matter who we are or where we’re from, we all feel a pull to learn more about our purpose.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on some of these questions with you. They’re in no particular order, but they are all real questions that reporters, readers, and interviewers have asked me over the last two years.

FAQ #1: Has your experience changed your fear of death?

My experience showed me that death is not to be feared. It is not the end of our relationships with the others. It is not the end of our conscious awareness. At the same time, it also made me even more conscious of how precious life is. We exist to contribute the most good we can, and to experience all the joys, and learn the lessons we are to learn (and teach others) from the challenges and hardships in life. I know that the truth of my experience—that our consciousness (soul/spirit) is greater than our physical incarnation, and continues beyond death—holds for every living being.

Eben Alexander III MD

Eben Alexander, MD, was an academic neurosurgeon for over 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, with a passionate interest in physics and cosmology. He is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Proof of Heaven and The Map of Heaven. His third book, co-authored with Karen Newell, Living in a Mindful Universe, was released in October 2017. Learn more…